When you think of a photo editor for the Mac, you probably think of Photoshop. Wrongly, because in our opinion Pixelmator has been the best photo editor for the Mac for years. The new Pixelmator Pro confirms this position more firmly than ever.
Pixelmator Pro: faster and smoother
After ten years, Pixelmator is releasing its first paid upgrade this week, and it’s a big one. Pixelmator Pro continues with the line used by the original app. The design is even tighter, the animations smoother and the whole app is a lot smarter.
The app praises itself for the fact that all components are now in one window. A big difference from the original Pixelmator, which had several separate windows. This was especially inconvenient in many cases, especially if you’re doing other things on your Mac in between photo editing.
That’s why Pixelmator Pro has a brand new menu on the side of the window. Everything you need is hidden here, and it only comes into view when you actually use it. This way you can quickly crop an image, adjust the colors or add extensive and complex graphic effects.
If you need the exact same settings for your photos more often, you can save them from now on. By simply dragging it onto another image, all saved edits are performed automatically.
Exclusively for the Mac
Since Pixelmator Pro is made exclusively for the Mac, the app takes advantage of all of Apple’s APIs. For example, the app is made in Swift and optimized for the GPU of your iMac or MacBook thanks to Metal 2. This ensures an app that works super fast and fits perfectly with how the rest of macOS looks like. That is also a big difference with competitor Photoshop, which in 2017 still has to wait a long time for updates.
To make it a bit more flashy, more animations have also been added to the menus. This way you can already see what the image will look like while cropping a photo, even before you have pressed enter.
Pixelmator Pro review
Pixelmator Pro is now available for 65 euros in the App Store. As far as we are concerned, the app is more than worth the money, especially if you don’t have the original Pixelmator yet. This is mainly an improved version of the original Pixelmator. If you still have doubts, you can download a free trial version of the app. In any case, we are sold, the original Pixelmator was already our favorite photo editor, and Pixelmator Pro goes over that.
> Download Pixelmator Pro from the App Store (64.99 euros)